What the Deaf Long to Hear — Blackbird Archive

← v1n1, Spring 2002

We might have predicted,

those of us who eavesdrop

every day on the world

desire to listen

to a daughter's fetal heartbeat,

or the practical

need to know

when to shift

to a higher gear.

Even the Moonlight

Sonata, wanting

notes of music to fall

into a life ghostly

as reflections from deep

in space. But would we ever

have thought

that on this earth

someone aches

to know for herself

the rest of the story

wind tells birch trees,

the syntax

of the splitting

maul, wrenched

out of chainsawed rounds,

the voice of fire

as it casts its spell

on cold skin,

punctuation

of popcorn,

how to know

when anything is

signaling,

ready, done.

Someone aches

to know

what clue

tells others

she's hungry

for the difference

in sound when surf

breaks, when a heart

lurches, when water heals

after swallowing

a diver.

body longing nature

Peggy Shumaker

Peggy Shumaker is the author of several poetry collections, including Gnawed Bones (2010), Underground Rivers , (2002, both from Red Hen Press), Wings Moist from the Other World (1994), The Circle of Totems (1988, both from University of Pittsburgh Press), and Esperanza’s Hair (University of Alabama Press, 1985), as well as the chapbook Braided River (Limner Press, 1993). She is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and her work has been published in anthologies and journals in Russia, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Shumaker has served as president of the board of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and as a board member for the Literacy Council of Alaska and she was the 1999 Poet-in-Residence at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. Her essays have appeared in Under Northern Lights , Ascent, Prairie Schooner , A Year in Place , and A Road of Her Own . Shumaker is professor emerita at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.